The impact of the “Mérito Regional de Saúde” award on the pharmaceutical assistance of the Health Macroregional of Criciúma, SC, Brazil

Abstract

The Criciúma macro-regional health sector created the “Mérito Regional de Saúde” award to evaluate the services provided by the municipal public pharmacies. It serves as a strategy to improve the attention to patients in the 12 municipalities in the coal region of Santa Catarina, Brazil. This work aimed to evaluate the award impact in the public pharmacy services through the indicators of structure and process of the assessment instruments in each County pharmacy from 2017 to 2019. Since the Award creation, all Counties have been improved their health services, and the most remarkable changes occurred in the pharmacy organization, employees training, and innovations. Therefore, the Award was an incentive to pharmacies to improve their work process, consequently, bring better services to the population. It is important to note that the biggest change was not related to fi nancial factors for improving the structure but rather procedural. Therefore, the "Mérito Regional de Saúde” award can be a model to stimulate public health services to evolve, with real benefi ts to the patients and other users.